BARRATT, ALFRED. Physical Ethics or the
Science of Action. An Essay. London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate,
1869. 1st ed. 8vo. vi, 387 pp. Orig. cloth a bit darkened, light wear to
corners. Faint dampmarking to lower edge of endpapers, text very good but with
scattered scoring and occasional notes in pencil throughout, beginning to crack
at page 134 but still firm. Withal, a sound and not unattractive copy, with
faint stamp "From the Publishers" on front flyleaf. $125.00 Barratt
(1844-1881) was something of a polymath, "achieving the unequalled
distinction of five first classes 'within four years and two months' from
beginning residence" at Balliol College, Oxford. "The book on
'Physical Ethics' is a remarkable performance for a youth of twenty-four,
showing wide reading and marked literary power. The leading idea is the unity
of all knowledge and the necessity of bringing ethics into harmony with the
physical sciences. The theory resembles, though in certain points it diverges
from, that of Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom the author recognizes as 'the greatest
philosopher of the age.' Barratt describes himself as an egoist, and in a
vigorous article called 'The Suppression of Egoism' defends his theory against
Mr. Sidgwick."--Leslie Stephen, in DNB. Barratt's only other book, Physical
Metempiric was edited by Carveth Read and published posthumously (1883);
both books are decidedly uncommon.

BLAKEY, ROBERT. An Essay Towards an Easy
and Useful System of Logic. London: James Duncan, 1834. 1st ed. 12mo. x, [2],
170 pp., plus errata leaf and 3 leaves of ads for other Blakey titles at end.
Orig. cloth, spine direct-lettered in gilt. Corners of a couple of leaves
creased. An excellent copy. $100.00 Blakey (1795-1878) is probably
best remembered today as the author of a number of desirable angling books, but
he was a serious philosopher who studied in France and did research on
scholastic texts in the libraries of Belguim (see DNB). In 1848 he was
appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics at Queens College, Belfast. In
addition to the present work he published A History of Moral Science (2
vols, 1833), an elaborate History of Mind (4 vols, 1848), a Sketch of
the History of Logic (1851), and several other philosophical works. The
Venn Collection (page 114) had only the second edition (1848) of the present
work (which was, however, augmented with "an alphabetical list of upwards
of one thousand works on logic"). RLIN records only the Harvard copy of
this 1834 edition.

BRENTANO, FRANZ. Von Ursprung sittlicher
Erkenntnis. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1889. 1st ed. Tall 8vo. xii, 122
pp., plus leaf of publisher's ads. Later plain, stiff paper wraps. Very good,
untrimmed. $150.00 Brentano (1838-1917) is virtually unique among
philosophers in that his work exercised considerable influence on the
development of both Phenomenology and modern analytic philosophy. (Husserl was
a student and Russell was influenced, in particular, by Brentano's Theory of
Objects.) This, the principal statement of Brentano's views on ethics, was
translated as The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (London
1902).

FISCHER, KUNO. Kant's Leben und die
Grundlagen seiner Lehre. Drei Vorträge. Mannheim: Friedrich Bassermann, 1860.
1st ed. 8vo. x, [2], 159. Original mustard-yellow printed wraps. Wrappers with
some small chips and tears at edges, spine broken and neatly repaired, a couple
of leaves in middle of text loose. Untrimmed. $150.00 The Encyclopedia
of Philosophy calls this "the first large German monograph on
Kant...and it is from Fischer that Neo-Kantianism received its decisive
impulse." Elsewhere in EP, Lewis White Beck, calling Fischer
"the greatest historian of philosophy at that time" refers to this as
a "monumental book...that presented, in a form still useful although
outmoded in details, a picture...that could not but excite interest in and
study of Kant." A more than acceptable copy of this important work, and
scarce in wraps.

FOUILLÉE, ALFRED. La Psychologie des
Idées-Forces. Paris: Germer Balliere et Cie. Felix Alcan, Editeur, 1893. 1st
ed. 8vo. 2 vols. xl, 365; [4], 415 pp. Cont. ¼ leather and cloth. Spines
scuffed, sheets rather toned (as usual). Very sound. $75.00 "Fouillée's
outstanding and most original contribution to this exercise [of attempting to
reconcile philosophic idealism with scientific naturalism] was the idea that
thought could lead to action, which he embodied in the concept of idee-force,
or "thought force." This concept contains in itself the essence of
Fouillée's consciously eclectic, conciliatary method and aim, for it borrows
the notion of "force" from contemporary physical science and applies
it to mental states, to consciousness."--EP, calling this
"perhaps the [author's] central work." Widely read in his day,
Fouillée's ideas had little lasting influence, save on the thought of his
stepson, M.J. Guyau.

FREGE, DR. G[OTTLOB]. Die Grundlagen der
Arithmetik. Eine logisch matematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl.
Unveränderter Neudruck der Ausgabe von 1884. Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1934.
8vo. [12], 119 pp. Orig. dark green, stiff printed wraps, spine slightly faded.
Fine. $400.00 The second printing, on the fiftieth anniversary of its
original publication, of the most accessible and philosophical of Frege's
works. "In order to provide a preliminary account of his view of arithmetic
Frege wrote Grundlagen. It is in this book that he appeared for the
first time, and to best advantage, as a philosopher and not merely as a
logician.... This account [of the nature of arithmetic] was deliberately
formulated without the use of symbolism (other than letters for variables). The
work is fascinating even for those quite uninterested in the philosophy of
mathematics, since in the course of it many ideas are represented which are of
significance for the whole of philosophy."--Michael Dummett, in EP.

HEGEL, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH. Encyclopädie
der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Zum Gebrauch siener
Vorlesungen.... Dritte Auflage. Heidelberg: Osswald'schen Verlag (C.F. Winter),
1830. lviii [i.e. lvi], 600 pp. Cont. paste-paper boards, title direct-lettered
in gilt on spine. Wear to corners and spine extremities, upper hinge slightly
tender but still firm. Small (½"), clean tear at lower corner of title,
scattered foxing throughout, mostly confined to margins. Neat ownership signature
dated 1835 on front flyleaf. A solid, serviceable copy. $675.00 An
important edition, the last published during Hegel's lifetime, and considerably
corrected and revised. It is intended as a compendium of Hegel's system to be
used in conjunction with his lectures. First published in 1817, a much
augmented second edition appeared in 1827. "The third edition (1830) is
basically very similar to the second, though there now are three prefaces, 577
paragraphs instead of 574, and a few more pages as well. On close examination,
however, one discovers literally thousands of changes [Nicolin and Pöggeler
catalogued 3600]. Even in his approach to this most cut-and-dried of his books,
Hegel until right before his death was not by any means a man who had stopped thinking
and re-thinking."--Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation. Hegel used
this third edition of the Encyclopädie in his lectures of 1830 and 1831.
Following his death it was re-issued as part of the collected works, the
editors supplementing the text with voluminous Zusätze, expanding the
work to 3 volumes and more than 1600 pages. It was this edited version which
became standard and it is Kaufmann's contention that the additions have
distorted, or at the very least, obscured, the text and (as also with most of
Hegel's other works) that they have misled students of Hegel. If one accepts
Kaufmann's thesis, this third edition is "definitive" and thus of
crucial importance to Hegel scholarship. RLIN records copies at Dartmouth,
Harvard and N.Y.U.

(LA METTRIE.) BOERHAAVE, HERMAN. Aphorismes...sur
la Connaissance et la Cure de Maladies, Traduit en Français par *** [J.O. La
Mettrie]. Paris: Huarte & Briasson, 1739. 12mo. (16.4 cm). [14], 560 pp.
Cont. sheep, spine gilt with red leather label, edges speckled red, marbled
endpapers. Spine ends slightly rubbed, small wear to corners. Sheets with light
toning, "Preface" and "Table de Chapitres" (pp. v-x), and
"Corrections and Additions" (pp. 509-512) a bit more browned. An
excellent copy. $750.00 Second edition, comprising sheets of the
Rennes 1738 edition with new titlepage, dedication, "approbation" and
a lengthy (pp. 513-560) index. Stoddard 6, recording copies of this 1739
edition at the National Library of Medicine, Countway Library (Harvard Medical
School), and the Wellcome Library. The present copy has the misprint 105 at
page 205 and I³ unsigned. Additionally, this copy has page 211 misprinted 111.
La Mettrie was a student of Boerhaave at Leyden. Upon his return to France La
Mettrie made a point of spreading the Boerhaavian system, translating and
annotating a number of works by Boerhaave. The Aphorismes, while based
on Boerhaave's system of physiology, is a practical, pragmatic work based on
his own observation and utilizing ideas of schools (rival physiologists,
iatrochemists) of which Boerhaave was highly critical in theory. It was
precisely this empircal, pragmatic, epistemologically modest approach which
appealed to La Mettrie. Indeed, despite his immense admiration for Boerhaave,
La Mettrie used this methodology to dissent from his teacher. As Wellman
demonstrates in her excellent recent (1992) study, La Mettrie was principally
motivated not by scientific doctrine (materialism, atomism, &c.) or
philosophic doctrine (sensualism, atheism), but by the desire for medical
reform. All of his works--medical satires, medical treatises and translations,
and the "philosophical" works--seek this aim, by undermining the
medical establishment, by reforming medical education and practice, and by
enlightening the public.

(LA METTRIE.) DU BOIS-REYMOND, EMIL La
Mettrie. Rede in der Öffentlichen Sitzung der Königl. Preuss. Akademie der
Wissenschaften zur Gedächtnissfeier Friedrich's II. am 28 Januar 1875. Berlin:
August Hirschwald, 1875. 1st sep. ed. 8vo. 38, [1] pp. Orig. printed wraps.
Small stamp on verso of front wrap, sheets uniformly browned. Very good. $150.00
The first book-length study of La Mettrie, by Paquet, appeared in 1873.
"Shortly thereafter, Du Bois-Reymond, the well-known German physiologist,
delivered before the Prussian Academy of Sciences an incisive oration on La
Mettrie, in which the erstwhile member of that learned society was hailed as an
early founder of the monistic conception of things which...typified the spirit
and methodology of modern science."--Vartanian.

TOOKE, JOHN HORNE. Epea Pteroenta [Greek
letter]. Or, the Diversions of Purley. Second [-First ] Edition. London, for
the author, 1798 [-1805]. 2 vols. 4to. [8], 534; [8], 516, [36 (index)] pp.
With engraved frontispiece by W. Sharp, & 1 plate, plus two additional
engraved portraits of the author inserted. Contemporary calf, neatly rebacked,
edges and corners a bit worn and dry. Some notes neatly penned on endpapers by
an early owner. Very good. $375.00 A work which exercised
considerable influence on nineteenth century British philology and philosophy
(e.g. Mackintosh, Hazlitt, Stewart and James Mill). Volume I contains a chapter
on Locke's Essay: "Locke, he said, made a happy mistake when he
called his book an essay on human understanding, instead of an essay upon
grammar. Horne Tooke, in fact, was a thorough nominalist after the fashion of
Hobbes; he ridiculed the 'Hermes' of Harris, and Monboddo, who tried to revive
Aristotelian logic...."--DNB.

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